THE PLYMOUTH COMPANY, whose principal men resided in Plymouth, had the tract between the forty-first and forty-fifth degrees of latitude. This was called North Virginia.
[Footnote: They sent out a colony under Captain Popham (poo-am), in the same year with the London Company. He settled at the mouth of the Kennebec, but the entire party returned home the next spring, discouraged by the severity of the climate.]
THE CHARTER granted to these companies was the first under which English colonies were planted in the United States. It is therefore worthy of careful study. It contained no idea of self-government. The people were not to have the election of an officer. The king was to appoint a council which was to reside in London, and have general control of all the colonies; and also a council to reside in each colony, and have control of its local affairs. The Church of England was the established religion. Moreover, for five years, all the proceeds of the colonial industry and commerce were to be applied to a common fund, no one being allowed the fruits of his individual labor.
DUTCH EXPLORATIONS.
During all this time, the Dutch manifested no interest in the new world. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, Captain Henry Hudson, an English navigator in the Dutch service, entered the harbor of New York. Hoping to reach the Pacific Ocean, he afterward ascended the noble river which bears his name (1609).
[Illustration: Henry Hudson]
On this discovery, the Dutch based their claim to the region extending from the Delaware River to Cape Cod. They gave to it the name of New Netherland.
EXTENT OF THESE EXPLORATIONS.
1. The Spaniards confined their settlements and explorations to the West Indies and the adjacent mainland, and in the United States made settlements only in Florida and New Mexico.
2. The French claimed the whole of New France, and made their first settlements in Acadia and Canada.